I have a folder where I throw links to interesting articles, but the problem is that I don’t revisit that folder often and I tend to put things out of my mind once I’ve seen them, so they just sit there unused and forgotten.

So, I decided today was a good day to share a few of them:

Elizabeth Moon on Revision: Making it All Better. Definitely an article for me to reread once I get feedback from my betas and before I start incorporating their edits. I like her “architectural metaphor” for looking at the novel and her discussion about how someone saying that something is “awkward” or “unclear” can have more than one root cause.

Ken Burns video On Story. I really like this video. It’s very simple, but what he says is very appealing to me as a writer. He talks about liking situations where 1+1=3 and the whole is greater than the pieces. And a favorite quote: “All story is manipulation.” (Ironic given my earlier post about not liking to be manipulated. I don’t mind being manipulated. I hate seeing it coming.)

A post by Patricia C. Wrede on Old Ways of looking at plot. I like this post because it allows for more variety in plot and structure than some modern advice. As she says, “There is a lot more to plotting than producing chains of action-reaction or crisis-catastrophe-consequences scenes.”

(And since this was a short post that didn’t require all that much effort from me, I give you a picture from the South Island of New Zealand.)